Taiwan again fails in UN membership bid
APF
Wed Sep 15, 5:22 PM ET
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – Taiwan failed for the 12th straight year in its bid to join the United Nations (news – web sites) after the UN General Assembly refused to take up the question.
After a day-long debate, the assembly agreed without a vote to keep the item off its agenda for this year’s session.
China opposes giving Taiwan representation at the United Nations, citing a 1971 resolution by the General Assembly that handed China’s UN seat to the People’s Republic.
Earlier, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian pressed his country’s case for membership via a satellite videoconference with reporters in New York.
“A free and democratic country like Taiwan should not be the missing piece in the United Nations principle of universality,” he said in a live address close to midnight local time in Taipei.
“Taiwan’s absence in the United Nations has left its 23 million people without an internationally acknowledged identity, and has turned them into international vagabonds, victims of political apartheid,” Chen said.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 